


Memoria

by aeli_kindara



Series: Supernatural Codas [22]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Acceptance, Angst, Canon Universe, Canonical Character Death, Coda, Episode Tag, Episode: s15e18 Despair, Flashbacks, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Season/Series 15, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27518128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeli_kindara/pseuds/aeli_kindara
Summary: For a long time after, Dean doesn’t move from the floor.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: Supernatural Codas [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/877383
Comments: 78
Kudos: 347





	Memoria

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a fix-it — more just grief stumbling toward acceptance. Ymmv on the acceptance bit.

For a long time after, Dean doesn’t move from the floor.

At some point, his phone starts buzzing. The sound of it startles him, loud in the dungeon’s silence — cutting against his own harsh breathing, the walls.

He looks down at the caller ID. It’s Sam.

_Does he know?_

He can’t know. He wouldn’t. He’s calling about something else; the disappearing people. Chuck. _Oh, God —_

It doesn’t feel like anyone should be able to not know. It feels like Cas going should wrench the blue from the sky. The sky from the earth. The earth — any of it, all of it, beyond this patch of cement floor, beyond these bare walls — from Dean.

His phone keeps buzzing. He can’t answer. It lands with a clatter on the floor between his thighs.

He raises his hands to his face. There are hot tears in his eyes; not enough of them. Not nearly enough of them. He doesn’t know where he ever went for more.

\---

_They’re in the dungeon, but Cas isn’t smiling at him. His face isn’t tracked with tears. He’s frowning, instead, over boxes and bottles. “Why did the Men of Letters need four different vintages of sheep’s eyes?”_

_Dean leans to look over his shoulder. He puts a hand on Cas’s arm because he can. He takes a bite of beef jerky and says, around it. “I dunno. Put it in with the gross stuff.”_

_Cas rolls his eyes. “You don’t think someone might want to actually be able to find these things someday?”_

_“Yeah.” Dean claps him on the back as he leans away again. “They’ll look in the drawer called ‘gross stuff.’”_

_He chews with his mouth open, just to see Cas roll his eyes again._

\---

At some point, he sleeps.

He doesn’t know how. The circuits of his mind are overloaded; he can’t even think about those of his heart. Maybe it just shuts him down. Maybe he watches Cas vanish, again and again in his mind’s eye, until some internal override switch gets flipped and drops him like a rag doll on the floor.

When he wakes, he’s slumped sideways against the wall, arms curled tight across his chest. One hand is clutching his still-buzzing phone. The other is clamped on his own shoulder — the bloody handprint there. The last thing Cas touched.

He looks down at his phone screen. It’s almost out of battery. The time it’s reporting doesn’t make sense. It finishes ringing — then starts again.

He can hear his name, faint in the distance: _“Dean?”_

That’s Sam.

Another voice follows it — trembling for volume. _“Dean? Cas?”_

Jack.

They’re in the bunker.

Dean’s seized, wildly, with the urge to hide. If he scrambles over against the shelves, maybe they won’t see him. He can fold himself into the corner. Maybe they’ll peer in the door and see nothing and he won’t have to answer their questions — and then time will slip back again. Maybe they’ll go away.

Jack’s voice again, closer now. _“Dean?”_

He’s being stupid.

His hands are trembling. He has to try twice before he can convince his parched throat to sound. “In here.”

The footsteps in the hall stop moving. _“Sam!”_ calls Jack.

Then — more footsteps, running this time. Sam appears in the doorway. He looks down at Dean and his face is terrified. He’s lurching forward again, falling to his knees at Dean’s side. Checking him for injury. Hands patting him down.

“I’m fine,” Dean manages. His voice sounds like he’s dragging it over barbed wire. “I’m fine, Sammy.”

Over Sam’s shoulder, slowly, Jack moves into the opening between the shelves. His eyes are wide, and his hands are very still.

“Where’s Cas?”

Sam stops his frantic exam. He looks back over his shoulder at Jack. Down, again, at Dean. His eyes search Dean’s face like they’re seeing it for the first time.

\---

_There are so many things he needs to memorize. Things he needs to make sure he never forgets._

_Dingy motel rooms. The shore of a lake. Burritos, and burgers, and PB &J. Cas in a blue vest. Cas’s grip on his shoulder, blazing through pain and rage and loathing, blazing white against the red and the black. _

_A neon-hazed alley. An all-night drive. Familiar shoulders, familiar coat, and Cas is turning — turning. Until his eyes find Dean’s._

\---

Leaving the dungeon is hard.

A part of him believes that as long as he’s here, he can still exist in that moment. The knife edge, the spinning coin. Once he steps over the threshold, it’s done. Cas is gone. Time has to hold him again.

_He’s gone._ His own choked-out words echo in his head. _He’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone._

Sam loops Dean’s arm over his shoulder as if he can’t move on his own. Dean thinks about correcting him, but it feels like too much energy. At the threshold, though, he reaches out to grab a metal upright and force them both to a stop.

His knife is sitting on one of the shelves, still open. Cas must have set it there after cutting his hand. There’s dried blood on the blade.

There’s dried blood on the shoulder of Dean’s jacket. On the back of the door.

It might be the last thing he has of Cas. The last thing — ever. He almost doesn’t dare reach out and fold the knife closed again — tuck it back in the pocket where it belongs.

Sam is watching him closely. His hand is tight on Dean’s elbow, holding him upright.

“I can walk on my own, Sammy.” He feels tired — so tired. “Really.”

But he lets Sam help him out of the room.

\---

_Cas doesn’t blink when the flash goes off in his face. It makes him look shell-shocked in the polaroid print-out; you can see the whites of his eyes. Dean cuts the edges carefully, fits them to the badge._

_“All right, so you’re Agent Moscone. Eddie Moscone. When you introduce yourself, you’ll pull this out of your pocket, got it? Show them ID.”_

_“ID,” Cas repeats slowly._

_Dean wants to kiss him on his stupid, confusion-creased face. He wants to pull Cas in by the tie and sink them both onto the motel bed._

_“ID,” he says again. “Identification. You better not fuck me on this one, man, all right?”_

\---

They’re somewhere in the hallway when he realizes Sam is talking again.

It might be to Jack. “We need to ascertain how far this has spread. Is it only America? Only the Midwest? Did it affect monsters, or demons? Are other angels gone? If you can get on the internet, try —”

_It’s Chuck,_ Dean wants to tell him. _It’s not a case — it’s Chuck. There’s no logic except whatever he thinks will hurt us most._

Only — only, he realizes, even as he thinks it, that’s not true. Not all the way.

Chuck can’t control Cas. He said so himself. He couldn’t make Cas say, _I love you._ He couldn’t make Cas give himself to the dark.

And Sam thinks — Sam thinks Cas vanished like everyone else. He probably thought _Dean_ vanished, probably drove the 8 hours back from Hastings on a churning stomach of fear that _Dean might be gone too._ And Dean’s phone kept ringing and ringing and no one picked up —

He stops them dead in the middle of the hallway, fingers tight in Sam’s sleeve.

“No.” He’s almost surprised by the strength of his own voice. “You need to listen to me. Cas isn’t gone like everyone else is gone. He’s _gone._ The Empty — it took him.”

Only now they’re both looking at him, and he has to explain, and he doesn’t — he doesn’t know how.

But the gears of his voice — of his thoughts — have ground into motion; the next words are easier. “Death came after us. She was already dying — she told us it wasn’t her, disappearing people. But she was gonna kill us. She, uh. She had us cornered, and Cas —”

He stops.

Need flares, urgent, on the edges of Jack’s voice. “Cas what?”

_He told me something I wasn’t ready to hear, maybe not ever, and left before I had the chance to say it back._

Dean’s skin feels hot and crawling under the weight of their eyes.

“He summoned the Empty,” he manages finally. “And it took him. And it took her.”

But Sam’s shaking his head. “No. No — Cas didn’t have any of Jack’s blood. He couldn’t have done a summoning without —”

He shuts up when Dean digs fingers harder into his sleeve.

_Eileen,_ Dean thinks. He thinks of Sam’s voice, strangled. _I can’t. If I let myself go there, I’ll lose my mind. I can’t right now._

“Sammy,” he says, softly, “please. It’s not — he’s _gone._ If you need me, if you need me right now — don’t ask me to explain.”

The words take a moment to land.

Sam shuts his eyes. He nods once. _All right._

\---

_Cas is wings like shadows carving a barn’s walls. Cas is, I’m an angel of the Lord._ _Cas is, Good things do happen, Dean. Cas is, You don’t think you deserve to be saved._

_Cas is wings of Empty. Catching him by the shoulders. Devouring his eyes. Devouring the last trace of a smile on his lips._

_Cas is — You are the most selfless, loving human being I will ever know. Cas is — Knowing you has changed me. Cas is — Why does this sound like a goodbye —_

_Because it is. Because it is. Because it is._

\---

It isn’t a case. It’s nothing like a case. But they work it like a case, because that’s the only thing they know to do.

The answers to most of the questions are simple.

Who’s gone? _Everyone._

Who’s left? _We are._

What did it? _Chuck._

How can we stop him? _We can’t._

They’re nothing now but players on an empty board. Waiting for whatever move comes next.

\---

_Cas is looking at the candy bar wrapper. He twists it in his hand, smiling faintly, and the gleam of the foil reflects for a moment in his eyes._

_“Jack loved nougat.” Sam’s words are sloppy, a little, with liquor; he doesn’t often let himself get to that point. “Do you — do you remember how that started?”_

_Dean huffs a breath, a smile. “Police station, I think. They had a vending machine he turned into his own personal robo-butler. Threw that sheriff for a loop.”_

_Cas crinkles his nose when he laughs. Cas doesn’t laugh very often. It feels like it’s just for Dean. It feels like a gift._

\---

It’s late that night — after they’ve set down the books and closed the laptops and turned down the library lights — that Jack comes to Dean’s room.

Dean’s drinking. His heart isn’t in it; he’s barely made a dent in the bottle. He feels tired, but he doesn’t feel drunk. The knock on his doorjamb is hesitant. _One-two._

He pours another splash of whiskey into his glass before answering. Lifts it to his mouth and grimaces against the bite. “Yeah. Come in.”

When Jack moves into view, his eyes look anxious, but his chin is set. He stands there for a moment, letting Dean watch him for over the rim of his glass, and doesn’t speak.

“What’s up, kid?”

“I knew about Cas’s deal with the Empty.”

_Ah._ That’s good for another swallow of whiskey. “Right.”

“It wasn’t — it shouldn’t have happened. He said it would only happen — when he was happy, when he let the sun shine on his face. He _wasn’t_ happy. He told me so.”

The temptation is so strong to shut it down.

_I don’t know what you’re talking about, kid._ That’s what he could say. He could knock back this round and pour another. He could start the long, hard work of repression. Move on.

Instead, Dean closes his eyes and feels the shadows move across them and says: “He told me he loved me.”

The air around him feels absolutely still.

Then there’s a choking sound from the doorway, and Sam says, “I —”

Dean’s eyes fly open.

The sliver of his brother’s face he can see over Jack’s shoulder is mortified — miserable. “I’m sorry, Dean, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, I just —”

He turns to go.

“No. It’s okay.” It comes out sharp. Dean winces; kneads his forehead. “It’s just, uh — yeah. He said the happiness was in just — saying it. Out loud. It musta worked, since the Empty came and took him.”

When he glances up again, Jack’s giving him a look like Dean just punched him in the gut. Sam, too, only worse — the muscles of his face all working on their own, eyes shining. He ducks his chin and asks, low-voiced, “Did you — love him?”

_Did he love Cas._ Dean thinks of a hand on his shoulder, of smiling, tear-brimmed eyes. Of years and years of lingering looks. Of casual touches. Of Cas dying and feeling like the world was over; of seeing him in a forest, in a phone booth, and feeling like his heart could start again. Of movie nights and long drives and arguments, of _I’ll watch over you,_ of _we had an appointment,_ of _don’t ever change._

Cas changed. Dean changed too. But a lot of things didn’t.

“Yeah,” he says and closes his eyes, and Cas is smiling at him, forgiving him; “Yeah. With everything I got.”

\---

_Before they got the TV, Dean and Cas used to do movie nights on Dean’s bed._

_It wasn’t — like that. Just a convenient place for both of them to sit; comfy pillows, space for Dean’s laptop between them. Sam keeps normal-person hours, when he can, but Dean never has; used to be, Cas was always game to keep him company for two AM movie marathons, whenever he was around._

_They ran through all Dean’s favorite westerns. His favorite horror, his favorite sci-fi, then back around for the second tier. Then they rewatched his favorites again. A part of Dean always felt one breath away from Cas having enough — getting up one day and announcing he’d completed his education and felt no more desire to sit up with Dean until dawn. But he never did._

_Because he loved him. Because he always loved him. Because somewhere — even if only in Dean’s mind, in Dean’s memories — he still does. Face grave, cowboy hat crooked on his head._

\---

“Should we have — a wake?” Sam asks. “For Cas — for all of them?” He looks like thinking about it hurts his throat.

_No._ Dean opens his mouth to say it, but Jack gets there first. “Not all of them. Not yet.”

There’s a glimmer of something flinty in his eye. Sam looks at him, then Dean, and his throat bobs before he nods.

Dean has his whiskey bottle, though. There’s plenty to share. And he has his memories — too many to hold by himself.

“Here,” he says before Sam can turn to go. The glass of the bottle is smooth against his palm; he raises it like a toast. “Jack — why don’t you pick a record to put on. Sam — grab two more glasses, will you? Could use your help on this one tonight.”

Cas is right, he thinks. About some things; maybe everything. Saying it is — well, it might not be happiness. But for now it’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Cass and Natalie for all the suggestions of slice of life flashbacks — there are many more I didn't have the space to write. And thanks to you for reading! <3
> 
> Tumblr link to this fic is [here](https://gravelghosts.tumblr.com/post/634577399370153984/memoria-25k-t-deancas-1518-coda-in-which).


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